Art Cummings: Millions need lifeline of higher wages

Published 5:26 pm, Friday, August 2, 2013

The strikes and rallies staged by fast-food restaurant workers in many cities across the U.S. this past week cast a glaring spotlight on the national crisis of income inequality.

Those actions brought into sharp focus the disparity between minimum- and low-wage earners who are barely making it and the fabled 1 percent of Americans who just keep getting richer and richer.

And the political events occurring in Washington, D.C., while these strikes were taking place clearly illustrate the disconnect between the lives of the millions of Americans who can barely put food on the table and the attitudes of many members of Congress -- who should be helping those folks fare better but who plainly and simply do not care.

Employees of McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, KFC, Taco Bell and other fast-food restaurants went to the streets in an effort to bring about an increase in the national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

The fast-food workers were speaking primarily for their 4 million brothers and sisters in their industry, but they symbolically spoke, too, for the tens of millions of Americans who are in other minimum-wage jobs, including thousands of residents of Danbury and surrounding towns.

Right now, a full-time worker making the national minimum wage of $7.25 an hour grosses $290 a week, or $15,080 a year.

That is slim pickings. That is disgraceful. That is obscene in this day and age.

Even here in Connecticut, where the minimum wage is a bit higher at $8.25 per hour, the weekly gross is a mere $330, which comes to a meager $17,160 annually. For the many who work a part-time job as well, that still gets them only into the mid-$20,000 range.

I ask each of you reading this column a question: Could you live on 330 bucks a week here in Connecticut, or be happy working 60 or so hours to get up to $500 a week?

For most residents of Greater Danbury, the honest answer is no, because that would be far, far below the median income in this fairly well-to-do -- and expensive -- neck of the woods.

To its credit, Connecticut just passed an increase in the minimum wage that will get the base wage up to $9 an hour on Jan. 1, 2015. But even then, a worker will make just $360 a week, or $18,720 a year.

The harsh reality is that even with that increase, a worker making the minimum wage would still be below the national poverty line of $19,530 for an adult with two children.

There are those who dismiss the case for increasing the minimum wage by claiming that most minimum-wage jobs are held by teenagers working after school or during summer vacation.

Not so. In the fast-food business, for example, the average age of employees is around 30 and the average pay is $9 an hour.

The striking fast-food workers are asking for a national minimum wage of $15 an hour. That is more than double the current rate, and reasonable people can agree it is too big a jump in one shot.

But calling for $15 an hour has been attention-getting and made a lot of people sit up and take notice.

Unfortunately, few of those people were Republican members of Congress, who stand in the way of President Barack Obama's passionate and well-placed call for increasing the minimum wage -- and helping put the brakes on the deplorable and ever-widening income gap in this country.

In fact, instead of hearing the message being delivered by the striking workers, some high-profile Republican members of Congress were instead threatening to defund Obamacare and shut down the government -- both of which would be additional daggers in the hearts (and wallets) of struggling Americans.

Those elected officials, led by U.S. Senators and 2016 GOP presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, just don't care about Americans in need or throwing them a lifeline via a higher minimum wage.

But there are millions of low-income workers across the country who do care, and there are millions of other decent Americans who are in their corner.

I hope you will join me in caring, too, and in doing whatever you can do to help the plight of those who can barely make it, be they fast-food employees or low-income workers in other industries or trades.

It is simply the right thing -- the American thing -- to do.

Art Cummings is editor emeritus of The News-Times. He can be contacted at 203-731-3351 or at acummings@newstimes.com.